BenderPDX: Finding New Portland Bars

Here's a great idea:  a computer program that scours OLCC filings online, and creates a Google map of all the new liquor licenses that have been applied for recently.  Portland computer expert and cocktail aficionado Chris Barker has created just such a program, and publishes links to its maps on Twitter.  Here's this week's map:


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Chris calls his creation BenderPDX. The Futurama reference is a good name for a Twitter bot, especially one that can see into the alcoholic future. If you follow BenderPDX on Twitter -- or even just occasionally click that link to check the feed -- you'll get the link to the latest map.

With a hat tip to #pdxbeergeeks and their series of Meet the Geek blog posts, I decided to bombard Chris with some questions about BenderPDX.

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BN: I used to occasionally try to remember to look up the OLCC filings to see what was coming down the pipe in Portland, but I wasn't very regular about it, and it's kind of boring. BenderPDX is like a dream come true for me, with a Google map to boot! Why did you create a bot like this?

CB: Thanks! I'm glad to know that other people are finding BenderPDX to be useful. I live out near Mt. Tabor, so when my "good enough" Thai place closed and I found out it was being replaced with Tabor Tavern via a news blurb in Eater, I realized I wanted to know when more places were coming in. I have done work in Python in the past, so I figured that I could probably find a module to strip addresses from the OLCC PDF that gets posted weekly, and then once I had the addresses, I could do some geocoding and then make a Google Earth KML file to view it. It was only after I had gotten that working that I realized it was only a few more lines of code to get bit.ly url shortening and tweeting worked into the script as well.

BN: How often do updates come out? Is it automatic? How do you make sure it finds the right documents at the right time?

CB: The first iteration of the script is manually invoked, it just dumps the output from the PDF to kml then tweets it. The new version (which does Portland only), scrapes the HTML from Portlandonline.com's liquor license notification page, which includes links to the submitted applications in PDF.  It is still very much a work in progress, and I don't have much in the way of integrity checks yet, so if there is a garbage upstream or I don't parse the location properly, you might end up with a bad link or pin location (usually right in the center of Portland).

Eventually I hope BenderPDX will be able to do a collection of different actions, so weekly OLCC updates, as they come in single business notifications, and random snarky Bender quotes as appropriate. And really, it's an excuse for me to keep playing with Python some more.

BN: How long do entries stay on the map? Are there links from the map to the source documents?

CB: Right now for simplicity, I just show the 15 newest applications in Portland, but each tweet BenderPDX generates is to its own map. So yesterday's tweet is a link to the map it built yesterday, and so on. As I expand on the concept, I hope to clean it up a lot and make it a little less hacky. The pins should link folks to the actual PDF of the business's application, but I have no idea how long Portland Online keeps those records available, and I don't want to get into the grey area of caching/hosting them locally. The rest of the information is just scraped from the same notification page I got the PDF links from.

BN: I met you through my friend Lindsey, who knew you as mrzarquon from Metafilter events. How did you get involved in the Portland Metafilter community? Are Metafilter people as cool as Beer people? Are there flesh-and-blood Metafilter groups everywhere, or just in Portland?

CB: I've been a member of MetaFilter since 2005, and starting going to local events put together by MeFites when I was living in Seattle. I've been to meetups in LA, Chicago, and San Francisco as well. I was actually attending Portland meetups long before I had moved here, as I loved the city and found that it was a great excuse to get to know people here in anticipation of eventually moving. For the tenth anniversary, Metafilter had 67 meetups on all seven continents (yes, even Antartica).

Being a member of MetaFilter means you have a social network stretching around the world full of interesting and strange people. When you hang out with Beer people (or cocktail people, or car people), you can in a way have a diverse group of people who all share this one common interest. When you hang out with a group of MetaFilter folks, the common interest is intelligent discussion on the internet, which can encompass beer, cars, computers, politics, healthcare, mortuary practices, what is the most cost effective way to raise chickens and what was the name of that song you heard that one time while watching Saturday morning cartoons as a kid. I don't know if I have a common definition of Cool, but I find that meetups with other folks from Metafilter to be interesting if not fascinating. I am proud to say I participate in a community where folks like Adam Savage drop by, because they like the conversation and the topics discussed.

BN: What's your day job? Have you spawned any other bots we should know about?

CB: I work for Portland State, doing IT work for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In short, I herd professors and help make sure that they get their labs and systems setup properly, so they can focus on teaching instead of how to get their bioinformatics software working in a new lab. In the past I've worked mostly as an IT consultant, so the change in pace (from 60+ hours/week and travel to 40 hours and a bus commute) has finally allowed me to pursue honing some of my programming skills and working on making some creative projects for once, not just troubleshooting an Exchange server at two in the morning or flying across the country to repair someone's SAN.

BenderPDX is my first bot, I'm hoping to work on extending it out nicely so it is a genuine robust script, and not something "good enough." There is a ton of potential in parsing twitter feeds, and the other day I was thinking how it would be cool for there to be an #ontappdx like system but for food carts, but my programming abilities aren't up to that task yet.

BN: What kind of bars are you hoping BenderPDX finds for you? What are your current favorite places in town?

CB: Interesting ones near my house, so I can walk home afterwards. I like places that do creative things with alcohol, so a bar that actually knows to stir a Manhattan and not muddle the orange in an Old Fashioned are things I am always looking out for.

Of my favorite places in town, it depends on what I'm going for:

• Brunch: City State Diner, fast, great food, no line
• Dinner: Over and Out/The Observatory, awesome two for one space in Montavilla, bar in the back with pinball, fine dining in the front.
• Drinks: Vintage Cocktail Lounge - I've been there so often I run their website now, and they are always trying to think of new ways to mix drinks. If I was going to open a bar, they have the template I would most likely copy from. Also recently I've been hanging out at the Guild Public House, which has had a nice bounce back since they got new owners (one of whom is the owner of Vintage), it helps that I pass it on my bus ride home from work.

But I am also excited just for the rain to finally stop so I can actually have a nice weekend BBQ in my back yard.

Preview: Lucky Lab Barleywine Festival 2012

[Editor's Note: I'm happy to add Pub Night stalwart Lindsey -- developer of It's Pub Night's Six-Pack Equivalent Calculator Android app -- to our ever-expanding roster of guest writers.  Thanks, Lindsey!]

On Saturday I had the distinct pleasure to represent It's Pub Night at an exclusive event for Portland beer glitterati: taste testing the beers for the Lucky Lab's upcoming Barleywine Festival. Beyonce and Jay Z were there. Jay even had their new baby in one of those front facing slings. True story.

The 2012 Barleywine Festival will be held next Friday and Saturday, March 2nd and 3rd, 2012, at the Quimby Street Lucky Lab, from noon to 10 PM both days.  It's one of the more relaxed festivals in town, and the early Friday opening gives you a great opportunity to beat the crowds if you can make yourself free that day.  Since it's held right in the pub, food, water, and seating are all abundant.

Many of the barleywines at the festival are vintages from previous years, stashed away in the Lab's vaults.  Because the kegs are stored over long periods of time, each one has to be tested to make sure they are still drinkable. That was our job. Unfortunately two or three didn't fare so well and will get dumped.

I recorded 27 different beers and there will likely be a few more vintage editions plus a selection of new beers, which weren't on hand to try.  While no beer is older than '07, each day of the fest will feature a changing set of vertical tastings whenever possible.

Here are a few of my standouts -- you should try them if you attend the festival:

• '11 North Coast Old Stock: very nice and quite sweet
• '10 Ninkasi Critical Hit: mellowing nicely but still hoppy
• '09 Sierra Nevada Bigfoot: aging nicely but still has a nice hop presence
• '10 Anchor Old Foghorn: a longtime favorite of mine didn't disappoint
• '09 Salmon Creek Brother Larry: a nice and mellow trippel
• ?? Terminal Gravity Bucolic: well-balanced hop presence
• ?? Three Creeks Brewdolph: very nice Belgian
• '11 Anchor Old Foghorn: "oh f*** yes"

Hair of the Dog Bottle Share at the Commons

As a sort of pre-func for Hair of the Dog's dock sale last weekend, there was a well-attended beer-geek bottle share Friday night at the new Commons Brewery (née Beetje) facility at SE 10th and Stephens.  The dock sales have traditionally inspired impromptu breakfasts and sharing of rare beers as people waited in line, but it's just not possible to do that at the new place at Water and Yamhill.  So HotD owner Alan Sprints looked around for a place to hold a party the night before, and Mike Wright generously opened the doors at Commons.

There were probably a couple hundred bottles opened and shared around: various Hair of the Dog vintages, unmarked homebrews, rare imports, and cult favorites like 3 Floyds Dark Lord Imperial Stout.  If you were standing in the right place at the right time, you might get a little pour of Dark Lord, or some 4-year-old Fred from the Wood, or something sour from Drie Fonteinen.  I brought the Rogue/Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple beer that I won a couple weeks ago -- a good thing to share since no one wants a big glass of that but most people would like to say they've tried it.  It was a little too sweet, but wasn't as bad as I'd heard and feared it would be -- actually it tasted a lot like a doughnut.  Definitely worth a try just for the fun of it.  To compensate for that somewhat whimsical entry, I also brought a Rahr and Sons bourbon-aged Winter Warmer that Portland Beer and Music founder Jason Wallace brought me from Texas.  Not that they need winter warmers down there, but it was a solid holiday ale with a nice whiskey/oak touch to it.

For most of us, it was our first look at the Commons.  I don't think the tasting room has regular hours yet, but a few taps were already hooked up, and barrels full of beer were scattered through the room.  There's a nice feeling to the place, and while I wish Mike had kept the funky, unpronounceable Beetje name, it's great to have a new brewery in the neighborhood.  His Belgian-inspired beers have all been very well-made so far, usually on the lower-alcohol end of the scale, and while there are some similarities with Upright's farmhouse line, there are enough differences to keep it interesting. Weekend tasting-room hours should begin before the end of the year.

I didn't have an extra $90 burning a hole in the pocket that made me want to stand in line for a six-pack of Adam from the Wood the next day at Hair of the Dog, though I might have been tempted by sub-$6 bottles of Bourbon Fred from the Wood if I'd known about them. There was a lot of grumbling on Beer Advocate about the poor organization of the sale.  While that's not a big surprise for a sale at Hair of the Dog, I do sympathize with people who were effectively punished for trying to pay with cash instead of plastic: apparently the credit card orders were collected up first, which had the effect that some platinum-plus people further back in line were able to buy Adam FTW ahead of those waving greenbacks around.  That's rather perverse, since card fees take a bite out of the brewery's haul.  But you should also read Jim Bonomo's hilarious rant -- complete with crybaby graphic -- that shows no sympathy for people complaining about the first-world problem of not being able to buy a few bottles of a rare and highly-prized beer.

Beetje Brewery

Apparently there is another small brewery about to open in Portland: Beetje Brewery has been approved by the TTB to start brewing on its one-barrel garage system. Oh, you haven't heard of Beetje? Neither had I, until I noticed a comment that Jeff left on the New School a few weeks ago. "Beetje" is Flemish for small -- sounds like we have a Belgian-oriented brewery here. Here's a cartoon that explains how it got rolling:



The owner, Mike Wright, says that he hopes to be running by late summer or early fall, but he has a family and a day job, so the schedule might vary. Here's his plan:

I will definitely self-distribute and hope to get into a couple of local SE bars/restaurants. There's no money in kegs at my scale so, I am interested in exploring bottles. Not only from a financial perspective. But I like bottle conditioning some of my beers.

That's kind of the opposite of other nano-brewery strategies: Vertigo, Mt. Tabor, and Natian are strictly keg sales. But it makes sense -- if you can only brew 4 pony kegs at a time, you could have a wider distribution with a higher margin by bottling. I'm guessing it makes your startup costs a little more manageable as well: you don't invest in big kegs at the outset, just a bunch of little bottles that you add into your price.

The two beer styles Mike lists so far on his website are "a straightforward ale with a Flemish kiss", and a barrel-aged sour brown. Should be an interesting addition to the Portland scene.

Hair of the Dog Inventory Running Low?

John had a nice article in the Oregonian the other day about two eagerly awaited Southeast pubs: Hair of the Dog and Cascade's Barrel House.  As is always the case, the opening date for both of them has been pushed back repeatedly, and they are both going to miss their revised-revised-revised deadlines of July 2010.  Too bad:  it surely crossed their minds that it would be great to be open by OBF weekend.

A few months ago when it soaked in to my brain that Hair of the Dog would stop brewing for a while during the move, I rubbed a couple of pennies together and put a few bottles of Adam in my basement.  Mostly I was thinking it would be interesting to compare pre- and post-move Adam, but I'll admit that I also was hedging against some kind of disaster.  A late opening date isn't the end of the world, but I'm feeling pretty clever as I notice that HotD bottles are starting to thin out on store shelves around town.  The other day at Belmont Station there were only a few bottles in the cooler; at Fred Meyers down the street they were out of Fred (irony!) but still seemed pretty well stocked with Adam.

Cascade doesn't have the same problem, since they have two baskets to put their eggs in, and anyway they are already making use of the Barrel House to age beers, they just can't serve anything there yet.  If Alan isn't able to open Hair of the Dog until later this year, will we get to a point where there's no more left on the shelves?

Alchemy Name Change

A few weeks ago, Ezra reported that Jason McAdam's new venture, originally called Alchemy Brewing, had to be renamed Foundry Brewing, apparently to avoid encroaching on the Widmer Brothers' trademarked Alchemy hops.

I've learned from a reliable source -- actually Google -- that the saga continues: it appears Alchemy has applied to register the trademark Burnside Brewing Company. The name reflects their new location in the former Ozone Records location at 7th and East Burnside, and not any predilection for scruffy facial hair. Someone should register Muttonchop Brewing and ride on Jason's coattails. (General Burnside photo lifted from: History and War.)

Coming Soon: Cascade Barrel House

A couple days ago I stopped to visit the future location of Cascade Brewing's new pub, catty-corner across Belmont from the Green Dragon. Brewer Ron Gansberg already has dozens of barrels in the beer-aging section of the Barrel House. The rest of the building is still in demolition mode, waiting on permits to begin construction. The pub will have up to 18 beers flowing at one time, a couple of them drawn straight out of wood barrels. As for food, Ron says that the menu will be short and to the point. No decision yet on whether kids will be allowed, but now that the Green Dragon even allows them on the bar side until 8 PM, it probably makes good business sense. There's not a firm opening date yet -- after all, the real construction hasn't yet begun -- but the plan is for "the first part of 2010".

I was surprised at how much space there is in the pub side of the building. Everything I had read up to now made me think it would be tiny, and the building doesn't look so big from the outside, but there's quite a big area in there. Some of it will turn into kitchen, cooler, and bar space, but it's still bigger than I imagined. It will have that Lucky Lab warehouse feeling -- check out the wooden arches that hold up the roof. Add to that some outside seating below the loading dock, and you've got a place that's going to fit right in to the vibe of the neighborhood pubs.

The original Cascade pub, the Raccoon Lodge, is not that deep into Southwest Portland, but I'm sorry to say that it's enough out of my range that I have never been there. My unintentional boycott has paid off with this pub they're opening within walking distance of my house. I'm excited that we'll now have a range of Cascade's beers in the neighborhood; I guess I better start working on my sour beer palate, since the awards the brewery is harvesting in that category are only going to move them even more in that direction, especially at the Barrel House.

This continuing development of the craft beer scene in Southeast Portland is one of the many things that make me thankful to live in this neighborhood. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Coming Soon: Migration Brewing

My eagle-eyed neighbor Lindsey spotted signage for a new brewpub near NE 28th and Glisan: Migration Brewing. That will make quite a little beer district there, with Spints Ale House going in around the corner at 28th and Flanders, and Coalition Brewing (née Hobo Brewing) at 28th and Ankeny.

Pretty soon you'll be able to do an alphabetical pub crawl up 28th. Coalition at Ankeny, Holman's at Burnside, Beulahland at Couch, we need stuff at Davis and Everett, then there's Spints at Flanders and Migration at Glisan. By the way, Beulahland escaped my attention until a few weeks ago, but it's a worthy bar for us snobby types -- ten decent taps and even a cask engine (!). They also do their own house-infused vodkas and bourbons, if you're sometimes tempted by the hard stuff.

The Linked-In page for Migration mentions a couple connections with the Lucky Lab, which gives me a good feeling about the place. They're hoping to open in January. I'll put up more information if it comes to me.